


The Stars Will Be Our Blanket

by sunspot (unavoidedcrisis)



Category: Leverage
Genre: Gen, Noncanonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-07 00:00:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/424648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unavoidedcrisis/pseuds/sunspot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot wants to be alone. Parker has her own line of reasoning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stars Will Be Our Blanket

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to valtyr for some excellent beta notes.

Eliot sends two text messages on his way out of town. One to Nate, saying he's leaving and he'll be back when he's back. The second one is to someone in his contact list as 'A.S.' that just says _be there soon._

"What's going on?" Hardison says aloud. Parker shrugs.

"We should leave him alone," she says.

There's a note on his fridge that Hardison finds when he and Parker let themselves in to find good leftovers. _Lasagna in the freezer, cook @ 400 for an hour. Don't find me._

Hardison spins a promising looking dial on the oven. "Something's clearly up," he says.

"Obviously, or he wouldn't care if we found him." She peels the cold tin foil off the pan and folds it in to neat triangles to slip into her pocket.

"So, we should go find him, right?" He opens and shuts cabinets, looking for plates. This is supposed to be Eliot's domain. How should he know where the plates were kept?

"No, Hardison, we should give him space." Parker's usually the one to ignore personal boundaries, so Hardison knows she must really mean it. He doesn't bring it up again and they eat the lasagna in silence.

Parker is the first one to find Eliot. She doesn't use the internet or GPS tracking or a secret list of contacts, she just thinks for a second about where she would go if she were sad, secretive Eliot and she didn't want anyone to follow her.

She knows Corpus Christi is a big enough city, but she asks the first person she sees when she gets off the plane if she knows Eliot. The woman looks startled, then looks sad, and finally, she laughs. "Sure, I'm heading there now. Do you need a lift?"

She's not surprised when they pull up in front of a sprawling ranch house on the outskirts of the city, just far away enough to be in the country again. The house is a little ramshackle, but obviously well loved. Parker can tell it's full of people just from the feeling in the air.

"And you're a friend of Eliot's?" the woman asks, sounding a little dubious, before they get out of the car. She's an aunt or a friend of the family or something. She had probably said it on the drive, but Parker had been watching everything blur by the windows and hadn't heard.

"Yeah," Parker says, and the woman doesn't ask again.

Parker thinks it's only the second time she's ever really startled Eliot. He hauls her outside to the back porch by her arm even though she's not trying to pull away.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he demands. He's gripping the wooden railing hard enough that Parker worries about splinters. The yard backs onto the woods, and there's water nearby that Parker can hear. A creek maybe. It's nice. She can imagine little Eliot growing up here. He doesn't look happy to be back though. He just looks... She's not sure. Sophie would know, just as quick as a glance, but Parker couldn't place all these distant looks and faraway eyes.

"I wouldn't want to be alone, if I were you," she says quietly. She's not even sure if it's true because she likes being alone most of the time, but she still doesn't think _he_ should be alone, so she lies.

"Well, you're not me and I'm not alone." He means in the immediate, physical way. There are at least ten people in the house right now and they both know there's at least double that due at the house before dinner. "Go back to Boston, Parker."

Instead, she goes back inside and lets Eliot's older sister get her a cup of tea. Eliot doesn't come back in right away, but his sister, Amanda, says he's just sulking and he'll be back before dinner. Parker isn't worried either. She knows he can take care of himself. He's more like her than either of them wants to admit.

"I'm not happy," is what he says when he finally comes back. He's got a leaf in his hair and mud on his jeans, but no one asks where he's been and he doesn't offer the information up.

"You should take Parker upstairs and get her settled in somewhere. Auntie Alice has the guest room, but you can find somewhere for her," Amanda says pointedly when Eliot reaches into the cupboard to get himself a glass. "And clean up before dinner, or Ma will have a fit."

"She won't," Eliot says darkly. "She's got enough to worry about." But he picks up Parker's bag and twitches his hand for her to follow him up the stairs like she's a dog. She goes because he's got her things.

They've only just reached the top of the stairs when Parker's cell phone goes off.

"If that's Hardison, and you tell him where you are, I will personally see to it that neither of you are ever found," Eliot warns her. "You can sleep in the attic."

The attic isn't a huge punishment. They both know that when compared to some of the places Parker has had to sleep, the attic is practically a palace. He finds her a fluffy sleeping bag and an extra blanket and pushes them into her arms with a flashlight on top.

"Parker," he says, then stops.

She waits expectantly for him to continue, but there's commotion from downstairs, so they both slide down the ladder back into the house to see what's going on. A group of people have just crowded through the front door, all trying to talk over each other. The people who were already in the house all come to see and then there's shoving and hugging and even more raised voices.

Then someone spots them, hanging back at the top of the stairs and a woman near the center of the crowd bursts into tears. Eliot slides halfway down the railing and jumps the last few steps, wading through the crowd to hug the woman. "Stop it, Ma," Parker hears him say before she turns away. Most of the time, she doesn't get it, but this seems like an intensely personal moment and she doesn't want to intrude.

She texts Hardison while Eliot's distracted. She's not worried that Eliot will make good on his threats. If he hasn't murdered either of them for all the crap they've pulled in the last three years, he won't start now.

"Hi there," someone says, coming up behind Parker. "And you are?"

"Oh. Parker. Hi."

"Hi," the young woman says again. She looks exhausted and like she's been crying. Parker wants to offer her a pillow and some chocolate. "Are you Lee-lo's girlfriend?"

Parker stares blankly, but politely.

"Uni, come here!" a lady's voice calls up the stairs. "Your brother's home!"

She smiles at Parker and bounces past her, headed for the group of people downstairs in the wide foyer. Parker wonders just how many sisters Eliot actually has, because they seem never ending.

Hardison texts her with some flight information. He'll be arriving in a few hours, with Nate and Sophie meeting up with them from their secret vacation destination (London, some secret) by morning.

Eliot has his hands full with the two children currently hanging off of him. Parker decides she won't mention it. He waves her down to join the group of people, apparently ready to introduce her to his family.

"Uh, Ma, this is Parker. My... friend." It's clear to all and sundry that's not what he was originally intending to say, and the various family members standing in the front hall trade suspicious glances. Parker thinks he meant to say 'pain in the ass'.

"It's so nice to meet you, Parker," Eliot's mother says. "I'm Sharon. I wish we could have met under better circumstances, but Eliot rarely gets home these days..." She gives him a loaded look and he looks away.

"Come on, everyone," Amanda says. "It's time for dinner. And Lee-lo, I wasn't kidding. You can't eat if you don't wash your frickin' hands."

"Amanda, language," Sharon says sharply. Parker laughs to herself because she hears worse language on Saturday morning cartoons, but it makes sense here. This sprawling house is jammed so full of family and that overwhelming sense of 'lived-in' that Parker isn't used to, that there is no room for anything ornate or expensive or remotely resembling a swear word.

Eliot takes the stairs two at a time, shooting a glare at his sister, and it's only then Parker puts two and two together. She has a secret laugh at Eliot's apparent childhood nickname and goes to offer her help in the kitchen.

She takes a vegetable peeler and a bucket of potatoes. It's a job Eliot gives her a lot when she helps him cook, so she knows what to do.

It's over dinner Parker finally realizes what's going on. She'd had a hunch, understood the general situation, but now she's sure of the details, too. The family isn't talking about it; they're talking about everything else in the world that could possibly be talked about over a family dinner, but the chair at the head of the table is left empty and no one says why.

Parker listens closely and doesn't add anything to the conversation. The food is good, just like Eliot cooks. She's not surprised that he learned to cook from his mother; he's a lot like her. They have the same eyes, Parker decides. Actually, the whole family does.

Eliot has four sisters, it seems, and one of them is on her way home from Seattle and one is due in any time, coming down from Dallas. Parker has met two of them. Amanda is the oldest and Unity is the youngest.

Parker likes that name, Unity. When she says that to the girl, Unity laughs bitterly. "It's terrible. Do you know what it's like to be the last in a long series of dumb names?"

Before Parker can shake her head, Sharon interrupts. "Don't be like that in front of our guest. Your name is perfectly lovely, and we've told you a hundred times..." she stops, and clutches her napkin tightly. Parker sees the tears springing forward in her eyes and wants to reach across the scrubbed wooden table to soothe her.

One of Eliot's nephews does instead. "It's okay, Gran, you can tell the story."

Apparently the family has heard this fight before.

"Unity was your father's grandmother. It's a family name."

_Father._ It's the first time anyone has said it, and all eyes are fixed firmly on the plates in front of them and not the very empty chair at the head of the table. Parker steals a quick glance at Eliot who looks like he always does -- intensely focused on something.

"I know, Mama," Unity says after a moment. No one says anything for a long time until someone at one end of the table asks for something from the other end and the conversations slowly start again.

After dinner, Parker follows Eliot out through the back door again. She stays on the porch and watches him prowling around the yard for a few minutes. "Are you looking for something?" she asks, finally. "Want me to get you a flashlight?"

"No, I want you to go home," he says, turning around and facing her. It's getting dark quickly and she can't make out his face very well, but she recognizes the growl in his voice and she knows he's glaring too.

"Sorry." They both know she's not going to do that.

"This is family stuff, Parker," he says, still with a growl.

"You're saying I'm not family?" 

Eliot sighs and climbs the stairs from the lawn. He leans against the railing next to her. "Fine," he says. "Do you have something you can wear to a funeral?"

"Yes."

"Fine," he says again, even if he didn't think it was fine. "I'm going to bed."

"Is the funeral tomorrow?"

"Saturday." Eliot chuckles, but it sounds hollow. "Bright and early."

"Hardison will be here in an hour or two," she says carefully. She braces for something. She's not sure what. Maybe he'll yell, or tell her to go to hell, or break the railing.

After a long moment of silence, he sighs. "Yeah. I figured. There's extra blankets in Izzy's room."

"Are you mad?" Hardison had told her to ask.

"I'm a lot of things."

She knows that already. She tries to text Hardison without taking her phone out her pocket, but Eliot already knows he's coming, so she stops trying to hide it.

Hardison texts back a few minutes later that he's already in a cab on the way to the house, and asks if she try to defuse the bomb before he gets there.

Parker doesn't mention that, because Eliot seems really busy with his staring contest with the outline of the shed and she doesn't want to bug him.

It seems like ages before Amanda comes out to stand between them.

"Izzy's on her way," she tells them-- or, she tells Eliot and Parker happens to be standing there. "Olivia's boyfriend got them lost on the highway, so they won't be here 'til two or three this morning, she figures."

Eliot nods, taking it in. Parker wonders how easy it is to get lost in Texas, how many times Eliot tried it as a kid. Texas is a big place. She figures she'd be good at getting lost here. Maybe she'll try it later, when Eliot is done needing her around.

"Wait, her boyfriend? Not that scrawny kid from the chess club that took her to prom?"

Amanda sighs and nudges her shoulder against his. "You need to come home more, Lee-lo. That was years ago. This is her serious boyfriend, and he's actually a really nice guy. You'll be on your best behaviour tomorrow."

Eliot makes a non-committal noise and Amanda laughs and Parker can hear so much of Eliot in her it makes her laugh too.

"I mean it, little brother. And that goes for more than just Olivia's boyfriend."

That statement would make a light bulb turn on for a lot of people, in reference to why Eliot was the way he was, but it doesn't shock Parker. She doesn't think he's as good at hiding his secrets as he thinks he is. Maybe it's the same as finding him here when he didn't want to be found though. Maybe she just knows where to look for him.

Hardison shows up not long after with another one of Eliot's sisters. They'd shared a cab from the airport, he says. He joins them on the porch while the rest of the family kick up a commotion inside.

"She looks so much like you," he says to Eliot, dropping his bag by the door. He hangs back for a second, looking between Parker and Eliot like he's not sure what he's intruding on.

"Yeah," Eliot says. He still doesn't look up.

Hardison gives Parker a quick hug and then leans on the railing on the other side of Eliot. Parker's starting to get antsy. She's not used to just standing and being quiet, not unless she's listening closely for the sound of a security guard or something.

Finally, just when she thinks she'll have to say something to break the moment up, Eliot sighs and stands up straight. "Bed, I think." They don't question him. Parker is tired from all the emotions of the day, even though the vast majority of them hadn't been hers.

She takes Hardison with her to the little attic bed and basically uses him like an extra pillow. He doesn't complain. She turns off the flashlight and they lie in the dark, listening to the muted voices below and the settling of the house around them. There's only the smallest amount of light, squeezing its way through cracks in the floor, and it throws the strangest shadows among the boxes. It's the whole life of a family from long ago, stuck in the attic to collect time and dust.

"Do you think he's going to be okay?" she whispers to Hardison in the darkness.

It takes a moment or two for him to answer. "I really can't imagine a world in which he's not okay."

"Yeah. That's true," she says.

Parker falls asleep, and Hardison does too, because she wakes up some time later, when there aren't any voices downstairs and the only thing she hears is Hardison's breathing. Something woke her, though, and she strains to listen for something out of place. There it is, the quietest shifting noise.

"Hi," she says, as quiet as she can so Hardison's doesn't wake up. He's an unpleasant grizzly bear when he gets woken up in the middle of the night. But worse than that, if he wakes up, he'll want to talk.

"Hi," Eliot says. He only sounds a little mad that Parker figured him out so quick. He doesn't say anything else, just shifts her with a firm hand on her hip until he can fit next to them on the makeshift bed. He doesn't even say goodnight, so she doesn't say it either.

She doesn't need to.

He knows they're there.


End file.
